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Sabayon 4.1
Sabayon Linux is a very full featured DVD sized distribution that is really catching on in the Linux community as of late. The most recent release, Sabayon 4.1 Gnome, includes some very impressive features, and applications. I installed Sabayon 4.1 Gnome this morning and found some great stuff, I really have nothing but good things to say about this up and coming Linux distro. You can buy Sabayon on DVD inside our shopping cart. A portion of each Sabayon DVD sale is donated to the Sabayon project.

First, a few things worth noting about the newest Sabayon release. This release is based on Sabayon Linux 4 LiteMCE, Linux Kernel 2.6.29.1, uses Ext4, X.org 7.4, runs Gnome 2.24 but offers 2.26 through the Entropy repository manager. Sabayon 4.1 Gnome also includes Compiz and Compiz Fusion 0.8.2, and a great selection of Multimedia applications.

This Sabayon release is suppose to include faster load time and boot speed, KDE and Gnome versions, fresh artwork, and many other positive changes since the last release of Sabayon.

I used Sabayon for about an hour after installation and discovered that it has the following assets. Sabayon features XMBC Media Center which is an award winning media center that seems to work well on the Linux platform. It is also available on MAC OS X, Windows, and the Xbox gaming console itself. XMBC allowed me to easily access all types of media from one center location or media hub. I like this setup a lot and have found it to be one of only a few home media solutions powered from a Linux desktop. If you are into home theater or looking to build a home theater setup with Linux, I suggest you watch the “Building The Ultimate Home Theater” video series from Jupiterbroadcasting.

Other applications included with Sabayon that are worth checking out include OpenOffice, GIMP, F-Spot, aMule, and Pidgin. I can see myself using multimedia applications like Xine, MPlayer and XMBC. These applications can all be added to another Linux disto but for me there’s something about booting up the system and everything working right out-of-the-box. This makes me lean towards using a beefy distro like Sabayon that is focused in a direction that suites my needs, in my case multimedia.

Sabayon 4.1 Gnome also has some features that make it easy to customize preferences and create a desktop that just works for the user. In the main gnome menu under System — Preferences, you’ll find you can change all types of things you won’t find in other distros. I immediately found the notification system and other features very useful and easy to use and adjust.